I am in Paris this week, staying in the heart of the Marais where I walk with ease to Ile-de-la-Cite, Notre-Dame and then along the Seine to the Musee D'Orsay and the Louvre.
I love this city, it is full of life, especially this week where we have had above normal temperatures, making the leaves appear quickly, leaving the cafes full...everything is so alive here!
However, there are darker, more sinister changes to Paris since I was last here. In the aftermath of the slaying of newspaper personnel/cartoonists by Islamic radicals, the city is buttoned down. Armed military with machine guns patrol the ancient monuments, and their presence is especially felt in the Marais, the ancient Jewish quarter.
Yesterday I took a walk down Rue des Rosiers, arguably the heart of what is the oldest Jewish community in Europe. It is normally bustling, full of shoppers, chatter, laughter, the Orthodox Jews moving alongside every other culture, with ease.
On this day, its silence was eerie. There was no one on the street, except a couple of tourists, like myself. As I started walking, a group of Arab youths materialized, young, late teens. They were aggressive in their manner of greeting one another, swaggering, fist meeting fist in a kind of fraternal greeting. They did not walk down the street. A large group clustered together, some gravitated towards doorways, watching.
I walked through the center of the group slowly, making eye contact with each of them, nonthreatening, observant. One young man met my gaze and flinched guiltily, jumping back a little. I kept walking down the street that felt taut with tension, and I wondered when all of this persecution against this community would finally stop.
Ironically, a couple of blocks away, a new exhibit just opened which begins an exploration of French collaboration in the Second World War. It was from the heart of the Marais that 8,000 men, women and children were loaded into trucks like cattle and taken to a sports complex called the Velodrome d'Hiver where they were left for days without food or water, or sanitation facilities: the old, the infirm, pregnant women, young families. Then they were separated, men from the women and children, and driven to Drancy and ultimately Auschwitz, and to their ultimate fate.
These were not Nazis brandishing the whips. They were French. In the Faustian pact with their Nazi masters they became just like them: monsters, devoid of light, devoid of the ability to feel anything at all.
What is it going to take to stop us from hating one another? How long will it take us to realize that we descend into the depths of depravity and potentially beyond salvation with every egregious act that we commit against one another? Even if that act also involves turning a blind eye to the obvious suffering and degradation of others.
I love this city, it is full of life, especially this week where we have had above normal temperatures, making the leaves appear quickly, leaving the cafes full...everything is so alive here!
However, there are darker, more sinister changes to Paris since I was last here. In the aftermath of the slaying of newspaper personnel/cartoonists by Islamic radicals, the city is buttoned down. Armed military with machine guns patrol the ancient monuments, and their presence is especially felt in the Marais, the ancient Jewish quarter.
Yesterday I took a walk down Rue des Rosiers, arguably the heart of what is the oldest Jewish community in Europe. It is normally bustling, full of shoppers, chatter, laughter, the Orthodox Jews moving alongside every other culture, with ease.
On this day, its silence was eerie. There was no one on the street, except a couple of tourists, like myself. As I started walking, a group of Arab youths materialized, young, late teens. They were aggressive in their manner of greeting one another, swaggering, fist meeting fist in a kind of fraternal greeting. They did not walk down the street. A large group clustered together, some gravitated towards doorways, watching.
I walked through the center of the group slowly, making eye contact with each of them, nonthreatening, observant. One young man met my gaze and flinched guiltily, jumping back a little. I kept walking down the street that felt taut with tension, and I wondered when all of this persecution against this community would finally stop.
Ironically, a couple of blocks away, a new exhibit just opened which begins an exploration of French collaboration in the Second World War. It was from the heart of the Marais that 8,000 men, women and children were loaded into trucks like cattle and taken to a sports complex called the Velodrome d'Hiver where they were left for days without food or water, or sanitation facilities: the old, the infirm, pregnant women, young families. Then they were separated, men from the women and children, and driven to Drancy and ultimately Auschwitz, and to their ultimate fate.
These were not Nazis brandishing the whips. They were French. In the Faustian pact with their Nazi masters they became just like them: monsters, devoid of light, devoid of the ability to feel anything at all.
What is it going to take to stop us from hating one another? How long will it take us to realize that we descend into the depths of depravity and potentially beyond salvation with every egregious act that we commit against one another? Even if that act also involves turning a blind eye to the obvious suffering and degradation of others.